How Can Your Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma Care Team Help in Treatment Decisions?
How Can Your Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma Care Team Help in Treatment Decisions? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
How can diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) treatment decisions be aided by your care team? Expert Dr. Nirav Shah from the Medical College of Wisconsin explains key factors that help guide treatment decisions and how some patient characteristics may alter dosing and treatment approaches.
Dr. Nirav Shah is an Associate Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Learn more about Dr. Shah.
[ACT]IVATION TIP:
“..try to come up with an individualized treatment plan that meets the needs of your disease and your situation.”
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatfield:
So, Dr. Shah, how do you work with your DLBCL patients in helping them make treatment decisions, and what should they consider when they are making their treatment decisions?
Dr. Nirav N. Shah:
It’s a great question, Lisa. I think that in the current area that we’re practicing, the term I use is one size doesn’t fit all. I really try to meet with the patient, understand number one, their disease, so the biology of their disease, what subtype or phenotype is it, what stage is it presenting in. Then I try to think about the actual patient characteristics, what are their goals of care, what is their age, and what are their comorbid conditions that may impact our ability to treat them and other factors, social factors. Do they have a support system? What is the distance that they’re driving to come here to be able to get treated here, and so I take all of this information together and try to come up with the best treatment option that is available for that patient.
Now again, the majority of people are going to get common regimen such as R-CHOP chemotherapy, which is one of the standard of care for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, but even within them, there are different ways you can administer it if you’re a particularly older patient or have a lot of medical problems. And so I really believe in trying to individualize the treatment plan for the patient, because each one of us are different, and how we tolerate things and what our body has been through in the past is going to impact how we’re going to be able to handle a specific treatment. And so my activation tip to patients about this is to try to come up with an individualized treatment plan that meets the needs of your disease and your situation.
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